Two Girls Staring at the Ceiling (7 page)

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Authors: Lucy Frank

BOOK: Two Girls Staring at the Ceiling
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“S
o I’m walking to school
scuffing my hand along
one of those dusty hedges,
feeling pretty good,
with my little uniform skirt
rolled up all short, and the lip gloss
my mom thought she hid
making my lips all juicy,
and here’s this dandelion
sticking its nose
out of the top of a bush,
four feet in the air.
“And it’s not even a daisy,
but I nip its head off cuz I just know
God put it there so I can find out if
Anthony Morabito in my homeroom
loves me or loves me not.
“And it’s got like a jillion teensy
petals, but this is important, right?
So I pinch them, one by one,
till there’s nothing but a pile of yellow.
“And yeah, he loved me,
for about ten minutes,
and what made me think of this now
I don’t know.
But I keep on thinking
“If that dandelion made it through
those sticks and branches,
taller than any dandelion is supposed
to grow, taller than Anthony,
most likely,
tall as it needed to be
to reach the light,
it had to have made another flower.
That can’t have been the only one, right?”
“I
f we could order
any ice cream flavor
in the world? Right now?
What kind would you get?”
“That’s easy. A root beer float.
Three scoops of vanilla, maybe four,
mountain of real whipped cream,
not the squirty shit—”
“I’d get that way-too-green pistachio
with the cherries,
the kind they only have—”
“Yeah, yeah.
In old-timey Chinese restaurants.
I used to love—”
“Me too.
“I could call my mom
to bring us some.
“If morning ever—”
From the hall, I hear:
“I KNOW WHAT TIME IT IS!
I’M FAMILY.
I CAN VISIT
ANY DAMN TIME
I WANT!
YOU KNOW WHERE I DROVE FROM?
HOW FAR I CAME
TO SEE MY LITTLE GIRL
BEFORE YOU PEOPLE …”
“Oh, no! It’s that man again!”
“Sir. I’m going
to have to—”
“I LOVE YOU,
HONEY!
“EXCUSE ME.
DO NOT
TOUCH ME.
TAKE YOUR HANDS
OFF ME.
I’M
HER FATHER.
“YOU CAN’T
TELL ME TO LEAVE.”
“Yes, sir. I can.
You can come back
in the morning.”
“NO.
YOU
CAN’T!”
“Shannon?”
“Is that
your dad?”
Picturing a dad wiry, scraggly
like her.
Bulky tall, like mine.
Picturing flinching, bracing,
flinging, sinking
into the arms
of someone you’re never sure
you want to see.
“NO. JUST
SOME DRUNK
ASSHOLE
NO ONE
WANTS HERE.”
“You don’t have to tell me
about not wanting anyone
to see you like this.
“Or about dads …
“I mean, it was a long time ago,
that Cupcake thing.
“So long I hardly think about him
Except, you know, times like this.”
“O
ne ear was bigger than the other
and stuck out and, when he rode
me on his shoulders,
made the perfect turn signal
and an even better handle when I hooked
“My other arm around to honk his nose.
He’d bugle like a bike horn,
Ooga-ooga
like a clown.
Then, all outraged
innocence, go, ‘What’s funny?’
“Or, ‘What, do I look like a horse to you?’
when I yanked his ear
and hollered ‘Giddyap!’
‘Yes!’ I’d go, and
he’d bray and sputter.
“I actually scrutinized my left ear
every time I passed a mirror,
eager for the Ear of Distinction,
as he called it,
doing his Mount Rushmore face,
then wiggling both his ears until I smiled.
“I’m over it. Obviously. Who wants an ear
that sticks out through your hair?
Plus, this has to be your basic
corny dad story.
No doubt every daddy in the universe
does the old honking horsey ride.
“No doubt he’s cracking up
the new kid now.
Unless the new wife
made him pin the ear back.
Or the new kid bit it off.”
“I
’ll shut up now.
I know I’m blabbing.
“And I know I’m supposed to stop
being sorry, but I’m so sorry
I said that to the shrink
about your body hating you,
being out to get you.
“About you having something …
you know … chronic.”
“Yeah, well …
“The good news is
chronic ain’t fatal.
“Except when
you die from it.”
“Yeah, but what kind of life
do you have? If you even
have a life.
“And what exactly
does ‘inflammation’ mean?”
Picturing flames licking
through her guts,
barbeque briquettes
smoldering holes
in her insides.
“Shannon. That island
I was talking about before?
That night?”
And my insides
burn, my blood
throbs and bubbles,
and I can’t tell if
it’s a surge of evil juice,
or a temp of 108,
or where my mind
keeps taking me.
“Shannon? Something
really bad happened.
“With that boy.
“I was thinking
about telling—
I mean, they’ve been
my best friends
since preschool—
“But it was Lexie’s brand-new dress
I was wearing that night.
“And not just that.
It was like … it felt like
we’re from different planets.
Like they’re in Cupcake World.
And I’m on, I don’t know, Uranus.”
And I want her to laugh,
make a sixth-grade joke,
say, Well I hope you’re
not planning on telling
me,
because I’ve got all the shit
I can handle.
Say something.
“And now it’s like someone’s peeling
my skin off with a potato peeler.
Like I’m feeling the feelings
of every sick person
in this hospital,
and I can’t make it go away.
“It seems easier
to just die.”
“Don’t say that! Don’t ever
say that!”
“I wish I could stay
a cupcake.
“I wish your cat was here.”
“What cat?”
“The cat you were talking about
purring on your chest all night.”
“I don’t have a cat.”
“But I heard you asking
your mom to smuggle—”
“HEY! DID I ASK YOU TO EAVESDROP
ON MY PRIVATE CONVERSATIONS?”
“No, but I mean, here we are—”
“RIGHT! TWO SORRY-ASS SICK GIRLS
STARING AT THE CEILING!
THAT DOESN’T MEAN YOU
CAN … I’VE GOT NO TIME
FOR THIS!
I’VE GOT THINGS TO DO!”
“Stop yelling!
I’m trying to tell you something.
“Those things
I said?
“About you
being sick?
“It was cuz I’m lying here
trying to get my mind around …
“Shannon.
What if
“it’s not
just
your
body that’s …?
“And please
don’t be like
Duhhh!
because—”
“Yeah. That was my dad, okay?
“And I have a daughter.
Not a cat.
“A baby girl.”
You?
Baby?
With Anthony Morabito?
So that was, like, a parable?
Are you still with him?
Or with someone else?
Where is she?
Aren’t you too sick
to take care of her?
What’s gonna …
But I would no more ask her
than …
“Her name is Joya.
She’s with my other grandmother
in Atlantic City.
Might as well be Uranus.
“And if you ask me one question
or say ‘sorry,’ I’m gonna have to
come over there and kick your sorry
sick-girl ass.”
“C
hess. Y’asleep?”
“No. Just lying here.
Thinking about that night.”
I almost
tell her then.
How it started out so beautiful,
so magically, amazingly beautiful …
“This disease ought to come with amnesia.
You know that?
“Shannon? You sleeping?”
“If I was sleeping would I be asking
if you’re sleeping?
“You feeling any better?”
“No.
That stuff the shrink gave me?
That’s supposed to be making me sedate
and tranquil?
It’s not working.
I’m gonna call the nurse
to give me more.”
“S
he’s so quiet tonight,
Mrs. Klein.”
“Yeah. Where’s old Sam
when we need him?”
“Chess?
I was thinking about opening
the curtain.
“Is that
okay with you?”
“Open’d be good.”
“We could use some air.”
“L
isten. If I die
will you send me flowers?
And don’t tell me I’m not dying.
I know that. But
if I do?”
“I’ll totally send you flowers.”
“Then I’ll send you some, too.
But I don’t want ugly cheap-ass ones.
Carnations and shit.
Or gladiolas.
I hate gladiolas.
“There was an old lady
at my church named Gladiola.
She was ugly, too.”
“Don’t worry.
I even hate the word ‘gladiola.’ ”
“Get me red roses.
So many my eyes will bug out
even though I’m dead. So many
I can smell them through my coffin.
“What should I get you?”
“Red roses will do.”
“Or we could send each other
something now.
Without dying.
Because, I mean,
if we both die,
we’re basically fucked.”
I
n a shoe just big enough
for her body, a girl bobs
on the ocean.
A tiny girl
bob-bobbing
in a wooden shoe
Too high
to see over,
too tight to turn
Her head can’t lift
her arms to row.
No wind to blow
The shoe to shore,
no one to hear
her scream.
“S
hannon?
Do you believe in dreams?
“Shannon?
You didn’t go to sleep on me,
did you?”
And I know
dreams are just dreams,
Know Shannon is just sleeping,
and the four docs in shower caps
Swooshing closed the curtains
around her bed will make her better;
Know the pill the nurse
gives me will let me sleep at last.
The bells, beeps, buzzes, urgent
voices I hear can only be a dream.
Surely I imagine the rubber squeak
of a bed pushed out the door, and later
In this endless night imagine
Mrs. Klein’s bed, too,
Wheeled out past mine:
Hallucinate her
sepulchral croak:
“Dead as a mackerel
on a tray.”

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